A future in flexible power

India’s electricity demand has been setting new records this summer. The nation saw its first all-time-high peak demand of 256 gigawatts (GW) as early as April 25. This was followed by still higher peaks in May, and peak demand touched another record-high of 270 GW on May 21, marking an increase of around 42% over the peak demand of the last five years. Moreover, CEA projects India’s peak electricity demand to surge to 459 GW by 2035-36.

Electricity consumption in India has been soaring on the back of growing household electrification and agricultural power consumption, intensifying heatwaves, and surging air-conditioning loads, as well as the structural shifts in the country’s energy landscape that have prompted an increase in electric vehicle (EV) penetration and induction stove uptake.

Expanding or upgrading the generation capacity may seem like an obvious choice to deal with the soaring peaks, but it is not. Building expensive power plants to meet these short-term spikes in demand would be akin to building a 10-lane highway for one hour of heavy traffic. It would be neither technically nor economically feasible, as the infrastructure would remain unused for the rest of the day.

But more might be required for establishing effective DF programmes. Several foundational elements must be established; the most crucial is a robust data infrastructure. For this, widespread digital metering is a vital prerequisite: utilities cannot measure, verify, or pay for DF at scale without smart meters that capture real-time electricity usage data and relay it back to utility operations. Also, the power system must remain flexible enough to accommodate higher RE penetration to prevent curtailment and avoid heavy infrastructure investment. India should accelerate the adoption of enabling technologies, introduce dynamic pricing mechanisms wherever suitable, and systematically expand successful pilots to actively engage consumers in supporting the grid.

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